The Counterfeit Traitor (Blu-ray) by Stuart Galbraith IV The Counterfeit Traitor (1962), a World War II espionage film written and directed by George Seaton and starring William Holden is, at 140 minutes, overlong and rather stodgy in its direction, but the film has unusual, almost unique qualities for a film of this kind. Instead of a glorified, high-tension escapist adventure story like The Guns of Navarone (1961) it personalizes the terrible cost of war as a series of intimate tragedies only partly offset by likewise small but meaningful moments of compassion and empathy. Superficially it resembles dozens of other espionage films but, for those paying attention, the film surprises by digging much deeper than the usual studio picture. Based on the 1958 biography of the same name by Alexander Klein, Th...Read the entire review »

Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema X (Flesh and Fury / The Square Jungle / World in My Corner) (Blu-ray) by Ian Jane The Movie:Kino Lorber Studio Classics presents three more unique film noir entries from the Universal Studios vault in the tenth boxed set of their Film Noir: The Dark Side Of Cinema collections. Here's what's inside…Flesh And Furyirector Joseph Pevney, with a story from William Alland and Bernard Gordon, was behind this 1952 Universal production which headlines Tony Curtis as Paul Callan. Paul makes a living for himself as a prize fighter, but there's something unique about him in that he's deaf. Regardless, Paul is really good at what he does and his star is certainly on the rise. He trains with ‘Pop' Richardson (Wallace Ford).One of Paul's biggest fans is the lovely Sonia Bartow (Jan Sterling), a woman who is always in the audience whenever she can be. She decides she likes what she sees in Paul and that if she gets in with hi...Read the entire review »